On 14 November 2012 Israel assassinated Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari in an airstrike in broad daylight. According to the Israeli government, the strike was the outcome of several days of escalation in which missiles were launched from the Gaza Strip towards nearby Israeli towns. Later that day the Israeli security cabinet authorised the army to draft reserve soldiers to enable the expansion of the attack and prepare for a ground invasion ‘if necessary.’ In response, Hamas declared that the Israeli aggression would lead to war. For eight days, up to the cease-fire agreement signed on 21 November, in what became known as Operation Pillar of Defence, hundreds of airstrikes were conducted, and thousands of missiles were fired at Israeli towns and cities. During the attacks, 139 Palestinians, most of them civilians including 34 children, were killed while on the Israeli side four civilians and one soldier were killed. The damage to Gaza’s infrastructure was immense. In Israel, the operation gained the support of most of the political system. In a poll conducted by the Israeli Channel 10 news on 16 November, 91% of the Israeli public supported the operation, while only 5% objected to it, and the vast majority also supported the continuation and expansion of the operation.159 While American and European leaders expressed their
support in Israel and indicated that they consider Hamas as the aggressor in the conflict, the European public opinion was more critical, and massive demonstrations were held in many European capitals calling to stop the Israeli aggression.
The writing of this thesis was concluded after the cease-fire entered into effect. I suggest that the violence exercised by the Israeli army should not be seen as the disturbance of the normal state of affairs in the ‘relations’ between Israel and the Gaza Strip, but rather as a conversion of ‘cold’ or implied violence into ‘hot’ or eruptive violence. ‘Cold’ violence is implied and concealed in the continuous domination and occupation of the Gaza Strip (and the West Bank), and is manifested in a network of laws, military decrees, administrative apparatus and conflicting policies. ‘Hot’ violence, by contrast, is the physical military power that erupts in the form of aerial bombs, artillery and ground invasion. Indeed, any form of government is located on
the continuum between implied, concealed and eruptive violence, and there is a constant movement between these poles (Azoulay and Ophir 2008: 225-236).
Indeed, the shift on the continuum and increased reliance on the eruptive end of it implies a form of rule that is domination rather than hegemony. A hegemonic regime that is concerned with the legitimacy of its rule (from Jewish-Israeli citizens and part of international public opinion) must exercise restraint in the exercise of violence, and accordingly its violence is largely concealed (ibid: 233). Nonetheless, eruptive violence is also present in the relations between the Israeli state and its Palestinian citizens, but the conversion of one type of violence into another is infrequent, or indeed rare and what we see instead is the kinds of implied and concealed violence that are undertaken by cultural, political, juridical and judicial means. Episodes of eruptive violence came about in the period of the military regime, in the Land Day of 1976, in the repression of the October 2000 al-Aqsa intifada uprising, among other cases. Therefore, albeit present, it cannot be compared in frequency and extent to its manifestations in the OPT.
Although this research project is based on an artificial delimitation and demarcation of geographical, legal and political territories to focus on resistance practices of Israeli citizens alone, a discussion of resistance to Zionism (in the forms of hegemony and domination) cannot stay confined to citizens alone. It must therefore consider a larger theatre of resistance practices, to include the front of struggles against the variety of manifestations that Israeli state control over the territory of Palestine takes. While these include acts of legislation, bureaucratic decrees, administrative policies and the brute use of force, among others, acts of resistance similarly take multiple forms and manifest themselves in an expanded and extended theatre of war. Indeed, resistance also holds a repertoire of ‘cold’ and ‘hot’ means, and includes struggles in the legal sphere, in courts, in the parliament, on the ground in direct actions, on the cyber sphere as calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions, as well as in armed struggle. Indeed, the spectrum of hegemony/domination and resistance operates across the entire geographical extent of the region in different ways.
However, the attack on Gaza proves that the components of hegemony/domination and resistance are entangled. When Israel bombs Gaza,
different forms of resistance increase, in direct relation to the increase in state violence. The attack on Gaza made more extreme the repertoire of resistance that exists on different levels: legal struggles, BDS, direct actions and, critically, the armed struggle. It is important to investigate these forces of resistance at a point of their extreme eruption. In order to reflect on the observations made throughout this thesis on different actors and different means of resistance, I now look at these different actors and the ways in which they were kick-started into action during and following the attack on Gaza, in order to expose a situation in which law, economy, perception, media, politics and culture converged and expressed themselves as a combined force.
A few days into the attack, different strands of resistance were already underway. Adalah, together with the Gaza based ‘Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights’ sent two letters to the Israeli Military Advocate General demanding investigation of cases of the bombing of a civilian media building and the bombing that led to the killing of eight members of the Al-Dalou family in Gaza, arguing that these actions were in violation of International Customary Law. Apart from the advocacy work that involves reference to International Law, Adalah was also engaged in legal work in the protection of the right to protest of Palestinian citizens that were arrested on 21 November 2012 following their participation during the previous two days in demonstrations in the city of Acre. The court accepted Adalah’s appeal and rejected the police’s request to prolong the detention of the eight detainees that were released on house arrest.160 Furthermore, in its November 2012 newsletter, Adalah narrated the
alternative reading of the Israeli attack on Gaza, in a position paper titled The Truth
about Gaza: The Occupation, the Siege and the Context for War in which it aims to
break the prevailing myths, both in Israel and internationally that hold Israel neither in control of or responsible to the Palestinian residents of Gaza living under occupation, thereby obfuscating the reality and “confus[ing] the analysis of both the applicable legal standard and the just solution.” Therefore, Adalah here attempts to put forward a list of facts that contradicts the disseminated myths about the Israel-Gaza relations, and by so doing to contribute to the public discussion both locally and internationally, aiming to influence public opinion as well as facilitate legal action against Israel’s
160 All information regarding Adalah involvement around the November 2012 Israeli attack on Gaza can
be found in Adalah November 2012 newsletter, at http://us4.campaign-
military actions in Gaza.
Activists and elected members of the NDA party also protested against the attack. Representatives of the party in the Knesset joined demonstrations taking place mainly on university campuses and in various cities around the country, giving speeches in support of the popular protest and against Israeli policy in the OPT, and particularly in Gaza. Haneen Zoabi asserted that the Israeli operation in Gaza is in violation of International Law and constitutes an infringement on the Palestinian right to live in peace, “this is part of (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s elections campaign… It appears that it’s paying off. […] Israel has a military force, but no military force can crush the people’s survival instinct” (Zoabi quoted in Sha’alan 2012). Jamal Zahalka, in turn, charged that the Israeli government is to be blamed for the deaths caused by the strikes on Gaza: “Anyone who was killed during this last operation is a victim of the occupation, and the Israeli government is at fault” (Ibid). Former Knesset Member Wasil Taha added, “Anyone who takes out leaders and children is destined to end up in the trash can of history… In this war, like in previous ones, the occupiers will run away, and Gaza will remain” (Ibid). The NDA thus maintained its consistent position of supporting the struggle of the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and their right to resist Israeli aggression. These kinds of reactions arouse the anger of the rest of the Israeli political scene, especially since the members of the NDA decided to observe a moment of silence at the party’s primary elections held during the operation for those who were killed in the army’s strike in Gaza.161
On the ground, Anarchists Against The Wall organised and participated in several demonstrations inside the Green Line as well as in the West Bank, protesting against the attack. In regards to the activity of the Boycott! group, the attack pushed forward the BDS campaign that enjoyed then more international support and backing. The plea to respect the guidelines of the economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel stressing the violence exercised against Gaza featured in letters sent to artists and companies throughout the days of the military operation and the following period.
161 MK Michael Ben-Ari posted on his Facebook page the question: “What do you think should be done
with MK Zoabi following her moment of silence for the Shahids in Gaza?” Hundreds of responses were recorded, among them ‘recommendation’ to physically harm Zoabi (Lis 2012).
As activists attest, the availability and support of international figures increased at the time of the attack and in its immediate aftermath.162
In sum, this thesis suggests that we cannot think of resistance as a series of mutually exclusive alternatives which one selects at the expense of the other. While some choose to work in the legal sphere in courts and through advocacy, others choose to engage in parliamentary work, and others choose to struggle on the ground. The theatre of manifestations of state violence and control exemplifies the togetherness of resistance: since the state projects its hegemony/domination through the use of concealed and implied, as well as eruptive violent means, encompassing law, diplomacy, economic strangulation and many more, resistance has to take all these means simultaneously. Resistance thus encompass the use of arms, BDS, popular resistance and direct actions, UN diplomacy and patient work in the courts and in the parliament. Hence, in a reality of a full spectrum of manifestations of state violence, varying from hegemony to domination, there must exist a full spectrum of resistance. Nevertheless, it is important to engage in an analysis of the efficacy of different strategies of resistance, in order to reveal their potential and perhaps suggest a context specific efficient utilisation of one strategy instead of others.